Tag Archive: episode-1


The Amazing Race 16: Episode 1 Recap

Filed Under: TV / 电视 by Nightheaven — Leave a comment
February 18, 2010

(photo via CBS)

Another season of The Amazing Race has started, even at its 16th season, it still looks quite good. I have no doubt that it will be nominated for  the Emmy next year and probably win it again.

After a brief introduction to all eleven teams, I also believe that again no all women’s team will win this season.

All teams gathered at a park in downtown Los Angeles, and they are soon released and running towards their backpacks for their first clue. They will have to take public transportation to LAX, where they will catch a flight to Santiago, Chile. The first three teams to arrive at the airport will be on an earlier flight, while the other nine teams will have to take another flight that leaves an hour later!

Some teams take the railway, while others take the bus.But it’s the teams on bus that arrive at LAX first. And the first three teams are Monique and Shawne, Jordan and Jeff, and Dana and Adrian. However, a mechanical failure postpone their departure and have them changed to the later flight with the other teams. All teams are on the same flight. Before their departure, the cowboy team Jet and Cord make a bad decision by exchanging all their American dollars for Brazilian money.

After their arrival, teams are headed for Valparaiso, which has been dubbed the San Francisco of Chile. They have to get there by bus, and they need the right currency to buy tickets. The cowboys are rejected for using Brazilian money, so they have to exchange their money again, making them the last team to leave the airport, along with Jody and Shannon.

The first contest that all teams encounter is a Road Block. Each team has to decide who to accept the challenge as the clue says, “Who has the balance of a cat and the courage of a lion?” The challenge is a cable-walk across a ravine. Catie is the first to take the challenge, next up is Jordan, both women make it look quite easy. However, as Dan and Adrian walk on the wires, they struggle and then fall. Dan continues without much difficulty, but Adrian is not that lucky. He is forced to return to the start and begin the challenge again.

Brent and Catie are on their way towards the next clue when the other teams arrive and decide who to go across the wire. Jeff and Jordan are right behind them, while Dan and Jordan is the third team to leave. The teams are told to take a Funicular lift down the hill. But Brent and Catie walk down the hill instead.

The next clue is “Time to paint the town”, each team is greeted with a ladder, four cans of paint and two brushes. There are colorful houses scattered about the hillside that are periodically painted by the towns folks. The teams have to match their specific color paint to the house that has an unfinished section and complete the painting. And they have to walk uphill with the ladder, paint cans and their packs to find the houses.

First to finish painting are Jeff and Jordan, then Catie and Brent, they are given the next clue by local painters. Dan has lost his paint brush and fails to find it. At the same time, Adrian falls again!

Jeff and Jordan are the first team to arrive at the pit stop, winning a trip to Vancouver where they will be treated to a whale-watching tour. Brent and Catie catch up right after them, however they are incurred a 30 minute penalty for not taking the Funicular.

Monique and Shawne take the second place, while the cowboys make their way to the third. Steve and Alice, although incorrectly paint the inside of a house, make up for lost time and finish in fourth. Taking the fifth place is the parent team Joe and Heidi, and Carol and Brandy take sixth.

Catie and Brent finally waited out their penalty and are the seventh team. Dan and Jordan, who are issued a fifteen minute penalty for their brush loss, hold on to eighth. Ninth team is Louie and Michael, in tenth is 71 year old Jody and her granddaughter, Shannon.

Adrian can not make a third try on the wire, as he’s too exhausted, so along with Dana they are eliminated.

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Survivor: Heroes Vs. Villains – Episode 1 Recap

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February 15, 2010
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Since they announced this new season of Survivor: Heroes Vs. Villains, I’ve been looking forward to it. I’d love to see how some heroes (especially Cirie and Amanda) will backstab other people again. But the greatest pleasure will be seeing how the ten villains working together. The premiere had some moments that we could’ve predicted (some contestants that played together in previous seasons teaming up, Russell plays his mind game on the girls), and some we would never see coming (Coach and Jerri are having a romance?!). Anyway, I love the premiere, and will definitely follow it the whole season.

The 20 contestants are brought to the beach in two waves, heroes team first, then the villains team. Love the music they played when the villains team’s helicopters flied in, quite dramatic.

After a few chats with both teams, Jeff starts their first reward challenge, and we all know what the reward would be, flint. In this challenge, teams of two would race out to dig up a bag in the sand and get it back to their mat, the opposing tribe could use any means to get it away from them.

Right from the start, the challenge became some kind of beach wrestling, very brutal and violent. First, Stephenie’s shoulder got dislocated (and the medic helped her relocated it), Rupert broke a toe (I think he might be pulled off the show some time later), and Sugar was topless. The villains took the first point, but the heroes evened it. Then Colby was embarrassed by Coach, who rode him all the way back to his own mat. How hilarious. Then the topless Sugar evened the score again. However, it was James who helped the heroes win the challenge, no one could stop him.

At first, the whole villain tribe looks like a mass, no one wants to build a good shelter, no one wants to do anything. But the next day, Boston Rob surprised everyone. He decided to make fire, by using two sticks! And he succeeded! I wasn’t quite fond of Rob before, but now I would love to see him stick around.

And then there was one more thing that I would never thought happen, that Coach and Jerri might have something. It seems that they attracted and intrigued by each other, but they try to keep some distance as they don’t want to draw others’ attention.

Meanwhile, the heroes are working quite well at first, though I think they built their shelter on the wrong site. And they’ve got four chickens. (Did the producers intentionally put them there? My guess is yes.) Again, someone surprised us in this tribe. Sugar annoyed everyone at their first night, especially Colby. Now, I really don’t get her doing that. She had no friends in this tribe, it just made her the target to be voted off.

In the immunity challenge, teams had to build a boat, then paddle it out in the ocean, retrieve a torch and paddle back, disassemble the boat, take the planks from the boat which they would use to build a ladder after a tough puzzle was solved. Candace and Parvati had completed together and won this challenge on Cook Islands, but this time they were in different teams. The heroes took a very huge lead at first, however Amanda, Cirie, Sugar and Rupert were panicked on the puzzle. The villains caught up and solved the puzzle way ahead of the heroes. Villains won immunity.

There’s no question that Sugar is the target. Though we still saw buzz starting around the camp, Cirie, Amanda and Stephenie all became a secondary target.

At the tribal council, Jeff points out that everyone is a big threat for different reasons, people who played together in previous seasons, people who had won, people who had played this game twice or even three times. Still, in the end, everyone wanted to vote for the weakest person, and that person was no one else but Sugar. Sugar was sent home.

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The Amazing Race 15: Episode 1 Recap

Filed Under: TV / 电视 by Nightheaven — Leave a comment
September 29, 2009

The Emmy-winning (seven times in a row) reality show, the Amazing Race is back for its fifteenth season. This is the first time that we saw an interracial couple in this show, and two professional poker players.

And the show began with a big twist! One team will be eliminated right before they start to travel around the world. The teams are given a task to find a license plate with the name from their first stop in Japan. It take some of them quite a few minutes to realise that the Japanese characters on the clues are clues to this task, eventually the others figure out as well. Married yoga teachers Eric and Lisa missed the last plate when they are searching from left to right, and is the first team eliminated. ( This new twist was a great idea, it added a lot of suspense to the opening seconds of the show. But, I felt very pity to Eric and Lisa, a trip of a lifetime like this was taken away before they even got in the car, it really sucks. I don’t know what I would react if I were them. )

Hilariously, the 11 teams got in a reality show in Japan, the first Roadblock they took. All teams had to stand around a sushi roulette and ate whatever landed right before them. Anyone who got to eat a wasabi roll (lots of wasabi in it, it’s no fun) and finish it within two minutes could continue. To make the show a bit funny, there was Godzilla pictures and some funny voices everywhere. Maria (one of the poker player) and Brian (husband of the interracial couple) were the only two that had to eat the roll twice, poor them.

But the funnier part was the next task they took. Each team had to lead 20 Japanese people through the most busy crossroad in Tokyo to a shrine, the pit stop. At first, it doesn’t seem to be difficult to finish after Meghan and Cheyne first checked in, however some teams didn’t have that kind of luck of having help from other people. Maria and Tiffany lost two of their team mates, and after searching for quite some time, they gave up and took the penalty. They were lucky that this was not a elimination leg, but they would face a Speed Bump on the next leg. (I don’t remember that there had been any non-elimination leg in the first trip in previous seasons, though I might be wrong. It seems that this was because of the new twist. But I have a feeling that the producers wanted to keep the only female team in this game for sometime, and changed the plan at the last minute. )

The second leg started right away. They were to fly to Vietnam. Some of them booked their tickets through Internet, smart moves. While the rest went straight to the air port and were told there were no economic seats available, however, Brian managed to persuaded the clerk to make seats for them. Wow. So all teams were on the same plane.

At the airport, everyone learned that Maria and Tiffany lied about their professions, making them a big target for the other teams. (It’s really a dumb move to lie, you have to come out with 100 more lies to cover it up. And to lie that they were working with homeless children, that was silly. My dislike to poker players widens.)

Many of them managed to get on the first bus and left for their next clue. A few teams were left behind, but they bribed the drivers some more money and had the bus leave earlier. (Which made me wonder, this kind of act should be considere illegal and the teams should receive penalty at the end of the leg. While apparently they were fine. )

The dock were to open in the morning, so they got grouped again. The task is to cover a tree’s roots in mud, an easy job? No. The mud was very thick, and everyone was struggling. While the Speed Bump that Maria and Tiffany had to do was a really easy one, they just had to carry some food for the guard near the dock. So they caught up with some of the teams.

After that, the teams faced their final task (Roadblock) for the leg, herding ducks. Each team had to herd a group of ducks out of the pen, moved them across a bridge, then back over the bridge and into their pen. Both women of the couples, Ericka and Jessica, were having troubles.

Matt finished it really quick, and together with Gary they checked in first. Zev was also quite good at this.

Jessica managed to get through on the third try, but it was too late for them. They were the second team being eliminated from the Race.

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Survivor: Samoa – Episode 1 Recap

Filed Under: TV / 电视 by Nightheaven — Leave a comment
September 19, 2009

Survivor has returned for the 19th season, with the biggest villain. This season, we are brought to the beautiful South Pacific island, Samoa.

The 20 contestants were divided into two tribes (Galu and Foa Foa) before they arrived in the island, but they got to elect for their leaders right away. Galu picked Russell (the good), while Foa Foa went for Mick. (Being a leader at this stage is more like a curse, good luck to them in the future. )

Mick made great choices in their first challenge, he chose Jaison as the swimmer, Russell (the Evil) as the strongest person, Marissa the agile person, Liz the smartest. While Russell (the good) made some bad choices by picking John, Erik, Yasmin and Shambo.

The swimmer swam out to retrieve a key. The strong person then unlock a bundle of heavy locks and set them up as steps. The agile person then climb the steps and make their way across a set of balance beams. Lastly the smart person unlocked a set of puzzle pieces and put them together. Foa Foa won the first challenge with a flint.

After they arrived at the camp, everybody started to work, while Russell (the Evil) began carrying out his plan of bringing chaos to this tribe. He formed separate and secret alliances with what he thought were dumb girls, and with Betsy, who he believed smarter than other girls. However, being a police officer, Betsy sensed Russell (the Evil) was lying.

At Galu, Shambo was having some trouble getting along with the youths who are in their 20s.

That night, Russell (the Evil) lied about his “miserable” story in Hurricane Katrina. Most people seemed to believe him that he almost laughed out. Then, we saw him emptying everyone’s water and burning someone’s sock in the fire. Yes, now you know why I called him the Evil.

For the immunity challenge, six members of each tribe raced across three A-frames, carrying ropes. Then they used the ropes to pull a heavy crate, and the other four dismantled the crate and use the puzzle pieces (again) to form a saying. Galu was first to get the crate, and though they had some trouble on the puzzle at first, they managed to put it together faster. Galu won immunity.

Back at camp, Mike tried to turned the attention onto the young girls, because he’s the oldest one and he literally did nothing in the first two challenges. He targeted Ashley as the weakest and some people agreed with him. While Marissa made a dumb move by telling Russell (the Evil) that she was wary of him, making her the target. Russell (the Evil) started to talk everyone into voting her out. He believed he’s running the game, though Betsy began to tell other girls about her suspicion. (However, people tend to believe no one at this very stage of the game.)

At tribal council, Mike tried to target Ashley. Betsy, when asked, chose Ashley as the weakest link. And Russell (the Evil) called out Marissa. As Jeff read the votes, Russell’s (the Evil) plan worked out. Marissa was the first person voted out.

P.S. They’ve upped the contestants to 20, so we are going to see some massive cut in the future episodes. And we should be seeing Russell (the Evil) for some time, as he’s been advertised as the biggest villain on the show.

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